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But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death, (Revelation 21:8, emphasis mine).

The first few times that I read Revelation 21:8, it just didn’t sink in. Take a good look at who leads the list of people that are destined for hell: cowards! When it finally dawned on me that cowards are going to hell (along with murderers, idolaters, liars, and the rest of the nasty crew), I wondered why. After all, aren’t they already scared?

Then the Lord reminded me that courage is not about not having fear. Courage is facing down the fear and triumphing over it. Courage is not allowing fear to stop you when you know what you should do.

Courage is something I see every day in the missionaries and pastors of Europe. While the rest of the world treats them as irrelevant, these brave men and women—and whole families, even!—take their faith to the nations. Many of them have sold all their possessions to enter into the mission field. Some have suffered hardships that have cost them dearly: health, marriages, and family death.

The cowardly are the ones who go to church, but don’t obey when God calls them to ministry. In their amazing book, Experiencing God, Henry T. Blackaby and Claude V. King wrote that God invites you to join Him in work that He’s already doing, and that God’s invitation leads to a crisis of belief. Joining God in His work requires major adjustments in your life. But the thing that was hardest for me when I was working my way through Experiencing God was the chapter titled “Joining God Requires Obedience,” and especially the section titled “The Cost of Obedience.”

I was fine with obedience costing me, personally, but when I got to the subsection titled “Cost to my Family for me to do God’s Will,” it stopped me cold. This was 1997, and I was a housewife and stay-at-home mom. My family was more important to me than anything else on earth. How could I ask my family to suffer and sacrifice for my answer to God’s call on my life? Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what God’s call on my life was. And if I hadn’t counted the cost—including the cost to my family—I might never have known. God might have deemed me unsuitable for service if I had chosen my family over serving Him.

Baby Steps

God took me along in baby steps. I didn’t jump into missionary service right then. Later in the book, it asks the question: What work is God inviting you to join Him in? When I prayed about that question, I remembered that I had been asked by another mother to help put together a children’s church program. The church had been through a very bitter split just before I moved there, and the children’s program was a casualty. So Sunday mornings consisted of great music, great teaching and preaching, but absolutely nothing for the children. While the adults enjoyed the sermon, the children all around me colored pictures, ate candy, and went out to the bathroom with a frequency that far exceeded the needs of even the tiniest bladder. So I called this woman and we met to pray and plan for putting together a children’s church program. We had so much fun, both with each other and with our own children, that really the hardest part of all had been making that initial phone call. That phone call had taken courage.

One day as I was showering I had an idea for a children’s program. I was living in New England at the time, and there the kids had a week off from school, usually in February, and it was called Winter Break. Many times, winter break put a strain on working parents, who then had to scramble to find someone to watch the kids while they work. If they didn’t find someone, they simply had to take time off work for that week. My idea was a one day Winter Carnival at which the kids could play games, win prizes, and learn about Jesus in a fun atmosphere. My immediate reaction was “What a fantastic idea!” and on the heels of that thought was resistance because it was going to be a huge task to put it together in just a month’s time.

Having recently been through Experiencing God, I knew that an idea that great for sharing the Gospel together with my feeling of resistance meant that this was really God’s idea. So I called the pastor and told him the idea. He loved it, and told the elders about the idea. They also loved it. Before I knew it, people were calling and volunteering time, volunteering resources, and volunteering to help. In the end, I had only a small part to do in planning, most of the set up, implementation, and clean up was done by others. I had so many volunteers and so many resources that in the end, I couldn’t take any credit for any of it. The biggest thing I did was call the pastor with the idea that God had given me. And all that the phone call took was courage.

I knew at the time that children’s church was a temporary call, but I had no idea that God had a much bigger call on my life. Two years after Experiencing God, and having Him change my life through service in children’s church, I got the big call. But even the big call happened in small steps for me. That story is too long to place here, but it is recounted in detail in my book, Laughing in My Dreams.

The point is that as I showed myself to be faithful in smaller things, God gave me bigger things. The biggest obstacle to overcome was my own resistance. That’s not to say that there wasn’t resistance and obstacles from other quarters. There was. But once I made my mind up, it was easy to overcome those things.

When I moved back to Italy as a missionary, I had a strong call of God upon my life, and my own determination to follow that call. People on both continents told me that I am a very brave woman to have moved to Italy alone. At first I thought that they just didn’t know how scared I am at times. But then I realized that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is going ahead despite the fear. And you know what I learned? Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” What I learned in facing down fear is that fear flees when faced with determined action.

As many of my readers know, the End Times is on my mind a lot lately. In reading Revelation 21:8 again, I realized that there will be a lot of people who take the Mark of the Beast, knowing that the Bible says not to. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Antichrist made that mark the number 666, just to snub his nose at God. I have heard that several non-believers are reluctant to take a microchip into their hand because they recognize that it sounds like what Christians say will happen. Those people who take the Mark knowing that they shouldn’t, will do so because they don’t want to be beheaded. They are cowards. They will end up in the Lake of Fire because they chose temporal comfort over eternal security. And really, the only reason why they would do that is because they just don’t love God.

Don’t be cowardly! Stand up for your beliefs. We will overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and by the Word of our Testimony. And never forget: God is good! He will give you the strength and the joy to go through whatever you must go through. Yes, joy! The joy of the Lord is your strength.

Back in 1991 I took a Spiritual Gifts Test to see what gift of the Holy Spirit I had. The result surprised and thrilled me: Encouragements. Frankly, I would never have guessed it, but when I read the result I felt my spirit soar within me, thanking God and telling myself: “Yes, this is right and good!” Second to that gift, and I believe closely tied, is the gift of Teaching. At that time I immediately began teaching Sunday School in my son’s class of 3 and 4 year olds. And I was his Sunday School teacher for most of his childhood.

I knew all along that God had something else in mind for me other than teaching Sunday School. That’s not to say that it was wrong to teach Sunday School–and God bless Sunday School teachers everywhere, even if I wasn’t called to be one. I believe that it’s because I immediately began exercising my Spiritual Gifts that God grew those gifts and added other gifts. Eventually I began working in my true calling: to encourage missionaries in Europe. When I began encouraging missionaries I had no idea that it was my calling. All I knew at the time is that it was something I loved to do. When God revealed to me that this was my calling my spirit soared even more strongly within me. I was doing something I love doing, enjoying everything about what I was doing, so to have God confirm that it is my calling to do this pleasant and enjoyable work was really wonderful to know. It was God encouraging me as I encourage His people.

Last night I returned from a brief visit with missionaries in Tuscany. I try to check in with them every few months or so, but that’s not as often as I would like to do. Nevertheless, one of them told me: “You have a talent for showing up right at the time when we most need your prayers and encouragement.” I know that it’s not my talent, but the Holy Spirit creating an opening in my calendar for a visit there.

I’ve gone through a very tough time in the past several months, as some of you know. God’s counsel to me has been: “Let these things go and concentrate on today’s tasks. Stay connected to Me.” And when I did that, He blessed me with those encouraging words from my dear missionary friends. That’s my Boss! He’s my Father and Friend, too! He gave me the gift of Encouragement, and then encouraged me just when I really needed it. God is good!